


Devil's Due

by mugsandpugs



Category: Hereditary (2018), The Witch (2016)
Genre: Age Difference, Blasphemy, Demonic Possession, F/M, Past Black Philip/Thomasin, Suicide Attempt, not quite dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2019-06-13 21:13:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15373440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mugsandpugs/pseuds/mugsandpugs
Summary: Paimon is disturbed when he learns that the mind of his host is not as empty as he thought. Peter Graham is still alive and trying to take back control of his body.Who better to talk a teenager into vacating his body than Thomasin; the prettiest witch in Black Phillip's coven?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This story includes some canon-compliant dark themes. It also features a relationship between a teenager and a 400-year-old.

"Brother; you look agitated. Is your new body giving you digestive troubles again?"

Black Phillip was often entertained by the trials his skin-changing bretheren faced. While he could alter his shape from goat to man (and many other forms besides), they were always _his_ form; his physical bodies to move and touch and breathe and walk in. 

Lesser demons like Paimon, however, were forced to steal bodies-- fallible, aging, dying, _rotting_ bodies-- from human hosts; a process made possible only through the worship and elaborate rituals performed by their devoted followers... And they were _still_ foolish and vain enough, century after century, to be particular about the selection. _It must be young. It must be whole. It must be male._ How limiting! Their dealings amused Black Phillip to no end. It was a wonder they got anything done at all. 

Today, however, Paiman's new body was looking especially unwell. He sat naked on a craggy stone, his spiked flesh-crown lopsided on its tangled mop of dark curls. Its naturally olive skin was looking pale and chalky, and was dotted with sweat at the temples and throat. Every so often, Paimon would twith, convulsively; almost insectlike. His breathing sounded labored. 

When Black Phillip clopped closer on delicately cloven hooves, prodding a brown, freckled thigh with his tightly curled horns, Paimon jolted as though shocked and pulled away fast. "Don't--!" 

"I am no expert on human bodies," Black Phillip lied, trying to hide his snicker. He never had been one not to bite when the bait dangled so alluringly. "You know better than I on this matter... However, you have been feeding it, yes? Resting it? Relieving it? I hear it took some extensive damage when you claimed it; have you set to healing all of its broken places? You don't want it to die before you've gotten some proper use out of it, surely?" 

He tilted his head side to side, appraising the meat-form suspended on its fragile calcium frame in which his brother-demon had chosen to live. It was handsome, Black Phillip supposed; gangly and spry with youth; but he preferred women. He took no males into his coven. 

To each their own... 

Paimon twitched again, the shivery movement making Black Phillip think of a serpent struggling and failing to shed its own skin. Those moonmad eyes were fever-bright, fixed upon his visage in a silent scream as though everything inside him was on fire. 

For the first time, the demon felt a hint of unease. He teased plenty, certainly, but a demon was never more vulnerable than upon first aquiring a new host. He didn't want to lose his brother, even though he had six others. They were all precious, in their own little ways.

Resting his front hooves on the stone where his brother sat, Black Phillip tossed his head back, ears flicking. Most goats were prey animals, and many prey animals kept their eyes on the sides of their faces. This was all well and fine for the most part, allowing him greater periphereal vision, but it caused him to struggle with looking directly at anyone whenever he wore this body. "Brother, look at me. Paimon!" 

The human hand that touched his throat was almost gentle; familiar. Stroking him like he might a dog. Disgruntled, Black Phillip pulled away with a huff. "Paimon, what is the _matter_ with you?" 

"Don't," that hoarse voice begged again; whispery, like the wind over rotting leaves. "Don't call me that." Words growing thick with phlegm, the body swallowed. Breathed heavily through its previously-broken nose. The fingers in Black Phillip's coarse fur tightened. "I'm _Peter._ I’m still Peter."

As Black Phillip stared, a single tear slipped from the body's eye and curled around its jaw, landing hotly with a tiny patter against his horn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the crossover that nobody asked for and I truly do not have the time to write... Yet here we are. Apparently I just have a soft spot for teenagers who lose their entire families, have a harrowing final fight with their mothers, and then end their stories in the company of demons.
> 
> Title from [this song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lrNKwcUojc)


	2. Chapter 2

Thomasin's parents gave her very little in their time together.

This was partially due to the extreme poverty of their situation: they simply hadn't the money for dresses and ribbons and berries. 

Even if they had been able to afford such luxuries, though, their culture forbade it. Though they rejected some of the Puritanical teachings from their home village, her mother and father insisted that rouge for her cheeks and combs for her hair were whorish affronts to God. 

Thomasin's parents did give her three things, though: Her roughly hewn dress and bonnet (burned in 1639 when her mother's blood soaked the bodice stiff and brown), a little hand-whittled ox set on wheels that actually rolled when you pulled it on a string (sold to an antique dealer in 1939 when the Great Depression pinched her finances tight), and finally, her name. 

Though Thomasin changed her surname often to avoid suspicion for her perpetual youth, she never changed her given name, not even long after such a name had fallen out of style among the Chloes and McKenzies of this modern world. Perhaps she still had an ounce of sentimentality left in her cold, jaded heart for this one little thing. 

Currently the name on the mailbox of her above-bar apartment read _Duchanne, T._ Her neighbors called her Tommy, and never once suspected that her twice quarterly 'business trips' lead her to the most remote and poverty-stricken parts of the country, where human babies were easy to prize from the arms of sleeping homeless women. 

Her youth and power didn't come from nothing, after all. 

They also had no way of knowing that she was in semi-regular contact with the devil. The first of eight kings of hell: Lucifer himself, sometimes affectionately referred to as Black Phillip. 

She plucked her cell phone-- useful thing; she would never tire of innovation and technology-- from the pocket of her flowery shorts when it buzzed, setting her spray bottle down from where she'd been spritzing her hanging spider plants. She didn't recognize the number, but she answered anyway. 

"Tommy Duchanne speaking." 

"Oh, it's 'Duchanne' now, is it? What happened to 'Spencer'?" 

The unmistakable voice on the other end of the line made warmth and joy bloom in Thomasin's chest. It had been so _long--_

"Philly!" she cooed, grinning like a fool. "Oh, I've _missed_ you." 

"And I you, dear heart." 

"You're always too busy for me," she accused, careful in her trendy ankle boots as one of her cats, Daisy, twined around her legs. She bent to scratch her little orange head with French-manicured nails. Daisy purred. 

"Terribly sorry for that," Black Phillip said, and Thomasin rolled her eyes. He could lie with the best of them: sometimes, she almost believed him. "Work, you understand." 

"Mm. And I'm certain it's work you have in mind for me now." 

"Well..." 

Of course. She couldn't expect a social call from the devil, now could she? He always wanted something. 

"Where are you living now, darling?" he asked. 

"New York. Greenwich. It's so charming; I love Bohemians." 

"That does sound like you. How long would it take for you to fly to Utah?" 

"Four to five hours, depending on where exactly you are. Do I need to be packing my bags?" 

"Yes, if you please. Now, rather than later." 

Well! It'd been decades since the devil who owned her had called her so urgently. She set her phone to speaker as she crossed the apartment to her small bedroom and pulled her luggage set out from underneath her bed. "Tell me everything, my king." 

"I'm calling you from the house of an occultist named Joan Wilson. My brother seems to have gotten himself into a tight fix." 

"Astaroth again?" 

"Shockingly, no. Paimon." 

Paimon! The birdlike demon was perhaps the quietest of all the kings of hell, only invested in his own interests. He'd never been ambitious or creative enough to try mass destruction or domination. How could _he_ cause much trouble? 

As though sensing her doubts, Black Phillip explained, "Two days ago, his cultists provided him with a new body. That of Peter Graham, age sixteen. I'll email you his information." 

Sixteen... Thomasin had been sixteen herself when she'd signed her name in Black Phillip's book. Sixteen when she'd stabbed her own mother's breast; had violently lost her father; her three brothers; her sister... 

"So, what's wrong with Paimon?" she prompted. 

"His host, it appears, has not yet been properly displaced. Peter was on the verge of death when Paimon took his body: He'd fallen from a great height and had broken several bones, including his neck... But apparently there was still life enough to latch on, to fight. Peter is still largely in control. He's refusing to eat; to sleep. He's trying to kill his body with Paimon still trapped in it." 

Oh... Thomasin had never heard of anything like _that_ happening before. How odd... 

"What does that mean for Paimon?" Thomasin asked, pulling Daisy out of her open suitcase to begin packing her clothing. Was it cold in Utah? It was mountainous there, right? She reached for her heavy coat. 

"Truthfully, I don't know. When he does talk, he seems lethargic. Exhausted. I think it's taking all his energy to keep this human boy from displacing him entirely. I fear... I fear Paimon may have met his match. I fear this may prove fatal, permanently." 

There was a thought. In her almost four hundred years of life, Thomasin had never known a demon to... To what? Die? Disappear? She'd never much liked Paimon, but the thought of a world without him in it was unsettling. It would have been like one of the oceans drying up, or a planet disappearing from orbit. All for one silly little boy who didn't know when to let go... 

"What would you have me do, my king?" she asked, bending into her closet that she kept stocked full of fashionable clothes (in this century that she could wear anything she liked, she did so with gusto) for her hiking boots. 

"Come here. Talk to Peter. Try to give Paimon more leverage on the boy's mind. You look like a pretty girl of his age, and you're very convincing. He's more likely to listen to you than he is someone like me, or one of the elderly cultists that love Paimon so." 

"I'll try my best," she promised, though inwardly she felt a sharp pang of anxiety. What if she failed? How disappointed would he be in her, then? 

"I know you will. You're _such_ a good girl for me, Thomasin." 

Oh... The praise, the warm way he pronounced her name in his soft accent... Her heart filled with love for her owner. He was so good to her, when he remembered to be.

A little choked up, she dropped her laptop and charger into her suitcase and zipped it up. "I'll see you soon, Philly. I'll get a taxi to the LaGuardia airport." She'd have to buy tickets on the way. 

_I love you,_ she didn't say, and Black Phillip didn't respond. Perhaps she never said it simply because she feared he never would. 

"Good skies, Thomasin." 

"May blood and prayers flow easy as water and wine," she replied, and hung up. 

Simone, the owner of the gay bar she lived above, was downstairs serving customers when Thomasin carefully carried her suitcase down. 

"Out of town again, Tommy?" she asked, offering her a maraschino cherry that Thomasin promptly popped into her mouth. 

"Looks like it," she replied, chewing. Though she knew she still looked like a teenager, with enough makeup and confidence, people usually assumed she was a baby-faced twenty-something. She preferred to keep it that way. "Will you watch the cats for me again?" 

"I can do that." Simone smiled when Thomasin stood on tiptoe to kiss her cheek. 

She knew the unwritten stipulation to her lease was to serve as eye-candy for the bar patrons, so when a few women glanced her way, she added a sultry smile and a slight sway to her hips that did not go unappreciated. Sometimes she did take customers upstairs for a little company, but it had been a good while since she'd felt any such urge, and now... 

Now, well, Black Phillip had crept his cloven-hoofed way back into her heart, as he always did when she least expected it. There would be no room for anyone else so long as he was there. 

Stepping outside into the crisp air, she began walking at a brisk pace, waving cheerfully at some cyclists that passed her. She had a taxi to catch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to put the Graham family in Farmington because the film was mostly shot in Utah and that's one of the most affluent Utah cities (the Graham house looked really fancy).


	3. Chapter 3

For the first time in Peter's life, he finally understood Crazy Uncle Charles.

Uncle Charles, dad had explained to a young Peter and Charlie, was mom's brother. He'd killed himself when he was a teenager because he was schizophrenic and thought that Grandma Ellen was trying to put people inside of him. 

In his mind, Paimon the demon stirred, and realization fell upon Peter in one sickening swoop. 

"It was you, wasn't it?" Peter asked, having given up on his original plan to ignore the demon in the hopes that he'd go away on his own. "She was trying to put _you_ inside Uncle Charles. Was he even really crazy at all?" 

'Crazy' was a relative term nowadays. After seeing the things he'd seen, perhaps _Peter_ was crazy, too. 

**You aren't. He wasn't. What a waste of a body.**

Peter flinched. He would never get used to that voice inside his head. Nor the images that flashed in his mind, unbidden: a boy wearing last generation's fashion, his shaggy hair dirty-blonde and his features long, just like mom's. 

He _did_ flinch when the slideshow of memories stilled on an image of Crazy Uncle Charles dangling like a macabre puppet from a makeshift noose in the back of a coat closet; eyes milky, tongue lolling, bare blue toes just skimming the floor as he gently twisted back and forth.

"Stop it. Stop it! Stop showing me that stuff! That's my _uncle!_ " 

Paimon sounded almost amused as he responded, **you didn't even know him.**

"And who's fault is that?! I _could_ have known him. I could have had an uncle. You ruined my whole family!" _You ruined me._

This silenced Paimon for a long time. Peter got the impression that he wasn't the most social of demons, though he'd only met one other in the form of a goat to compare him with. Paimon seemed continually amazed-- and frustrated-- that Peter was actually talking back to him. He sometimes took a while to formulate his responses. 

**Your mother must have loved him very much. She kept his things in a box in the attic. She looked at them sometimes, when she was missing him.**

Had she? Peter hadn't known that. There were a lot of things about his mother and her bizarre-o family he didn't know. 

"Of course she loved him. She named Charlie after him. _Most_ siblings love each other." 

**I can understand that.**

Black rage overwhelmed Peter at the mere _thought_ that Paimon understood this. The only way Peter could cope, even a little, with having his mind violated in this way was to imagine the thing inside him as a parasite: something vile to be ripped out and stomped into a pulp. He didn't _want_ his parasite to try and understand him. 

The intensity of his hate had Paimon clucking Peter's tongue against the roof of his mouth, and this made the teenager snarl in fury. "Stop doing things with my body!" 

The door to his cozy guest bedroom they were locked inside ("just until Paimon's 'little problem' is sorted out!") swung open, and in bustled Joan Wilson; plump and grandmotherly and ever-smiling, the apples of her cheeks pink with the pleasure of serving her lord. She carried with her a tray of food: thin slices of raw meat. Liver, maybe. 

Paimon, from where they sat cross-legged on the foot of the guest bed, fixed their eyes upon the food. He wanted it, and badly. He wanted it so much that Peter could feel his mouth watering. He hadn't eaten in days, and they were both suffering for it. 

Peter had grown up in privelege, with a pantry always full of food and parents who didn't believe in spanking or sending their children to bed without supper. He'd never in his life gone for so long without eating, and this woozy emptiness was alien to him. But how could he eat _that?_ Even the sight of it reminded him of his mother's fresh body, newly headless-- 

**Just close your eyes, Boy. Give me your control. I'll do what needs to be done.**

Joan was speaking. Both boy and demon paused their internal conversation to listen. "Now Paimon, dearest, I've brought you some dinner. I want you to eat, okay? Ignore that silly boy telling you not to." 

"That 'silly boy' is right here," Peter snapped, fists clenching in his hate. He'd never hit an old woman before. He'd never hit _anyone._ He was a quiet sort; never one to get into fights like the other boys. Today, he thought he might break that rule. "That 'silly boy' is me, _Joan._ " 

Joan, as always, ignored Peter. "Eat up, Paimon!" she chirped cheerily, and plucked a sliver of slimy grayish meat from its puddle of red juice with a pair of chopsticks, dangling it close to his lips like a mother playing airplane with a stubborn toddler. They could _smell_ it: pure copper. "That's it, take a bite!" 

Oh, God, Paimon _wanted_ it. Wanted it with a ferocity Peter had never felt before. Peter's mouth opened without his consent, and-- 

He swung his fist, not hitting, but sweeping; knocking the tray out of Joan's hands. It collided against the far wall with a clatter, meat oozing greasily down a cheerful painting of parakeets. 

**Boy! Why!** Paimon sounded genuinely baffled. **We are starving!**

"Good!" 

**Your grandfather starved, too. Is this what you want?!** The mental image of his grandfather's emaciated corpse, cheeks sunken, buzzing with flies, was shocking in its suddenness, but this time Peter was ready for it. He didn't flinch again. 

Joan recovered from her surprise and planted her hands on her chubby hips, scowling. 

"Now you listen to me, Peter Graham!" she snapped, prodding him hard in the chest, her finger wrinkling the gold robe they'd dressed him in. "This can be as easy or as hard as you make it. I'll blend that meat up and force it down your nose with a straw if you keep this up; don't think I won't!" 

Peter opened his mouth to snarl a response, but it wasn't his voice that emeated from within. 

" **Do not speak to my host with such disrespect,** " Paimon said cooly, and Joan's eyes went wide. " **Let me handle him as I see fit.** " 

"M-m-my lord," she stammered, eyes overflowing with tears. She sank to her knees, her long skirt billowing like the petals of a flower in her sudden movement. She put her palms and face on the floor, supplicating herself absolutely. 

No matter how many times this happened, Peter would never be comfortable with all these strange old cultists bowing before him. 

**Not for you. They bow for me, as well they should.**

_Well, can you make it stop? It's creepy!_

**Very well.**

" **Stand, Joan. Leave us for now.** " 

"Y-y-y-yes, my lord." Trembling still, Joan did as he bade, hustling from the room and locking the door behind her with the key she wore around her neck.

Paimon stared unblinkingly after her, cocking their head in his avian way and letting out a soft click of the tongue. He thought, rather dimly, that perhaps _she'd_ be tasty to eat instead. The clarity of his dark and snarled musings chilled Peter to the bone. 

Peter realized a moment later that Paimon had controlled all of their movements and words for a good minute now and flew into a panic, wrenching back his control so quickly that it made pain bloom in their shared skull. 

**Boy, you must stop this! I demand it.**

"Fuck you! I'm not stopping anything!" 

And he definately wasn't walking to the wall to lick the trails of meat off the painting, either, no matter how much Paimon wanted to. _Don't you have any shame?!_

**What is 'shame'?**

Groaning, Peter fell back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. His aching head spun... and spun... _So hungry..._

He didn't mean to share that last thought with Paimon, but the hungrier and thirstier he got, the harder it was to keep them separated. 

When he closed his eyes, he relived, again and again, the horrors he'd faced days before. His entire family, butchered like animals. The cultists, smiling euphorically. Feeling his own life slip away, relieved that this nightmare was to end soon-- only to be filled with a coldness; an Other. 

_I just want to die._

**I won't permit that yet. Not for many, many years. You and your body are mine, Peter Graham.**

"I hate you." 

**You love me. You've loved me for thirteen years.**

Paimon rifled his scratchy talons through Peter's mind, sinking into the fleshy pink folds of his brain, dredging up images of Charlie. Charlie at age two, reaching for Peter's hand, her solemn little face drawn into a frown. Charlie, age four, mouth smeared with a strawberry cupcake. Charlie, drawing pictures of everything she saw as her way of processing the world around her. _Charlie, Charlie, Charlie..._

"That's not you, you sick fuck. That's Charlie. I loved _Charlie._ " The very insinuation made Peter sick to his empty stomach. "Don't touch my memories!" 

**I _am_ her, Boy. Your grandmother fed me to her from her breast. The soul known as 'Charlie' was gone before she ever truly began. I am the one you loved.**

This time, the memories Paimon played for Peter were blurry, as though recorded from underdeveloped eyes. _Baby's eyes._ Grandma Ellen stood with her silk bathrobe open at the waist, breasts bared, a sigil painted across her upper chest in what looked like shiny red blood. 

Though basic biology ruled that an older woman should be unable to lactate, the swallowing sounds from the baby in the memory suggested otherwise. 

Disgusted and fascinated, Peter watched as a little hand, no bigger than a silver dollar, came to rest on his grandmother's bony sternum. 

He was seeing this fuzzy memory from baby Charlie's point of view, which could only mean that what Paimon said was the truth, or at least partially.

"No, you liar! You may have been in my sister, but you are _not_ her. You aren't Charlie. You're not. You're not!" 

Peter had been through so much. Too much. But this? This would be the final straw. If he was forced to accept that his baby sister, whom he'd shared a room with, whom he'd held and bathed and kissed and argued with, whom he'd _killed,_ had been a monster all along? He didn't think he could take it. He would go completely and utterly raving-mad. 

**Peter,** Paimon begged in his little sister's voice. She sounded like she was crying; weeping. **Peter, just listen to the nice old people. Let it go, Peter; come be with me and mommy and daddy. You don't need that body anymore, do you?** She sounded like herself, but that wasn't how she talked; not at all. The dissonance was sickening, and Paimon knew it. 

"Stop it!" With difficulty, Peter forced himself to sit up again. The pattern of different watercolored fruits that made up the wallpaper swam before his dizzy eyes, and he gripped the bedpost for balance, feeling a sickly sweat break out across his back. _I can't take this anymore._

He mentally grabbed onto Paimon, holding him so tightly there was no chance of his escape, before bolting for the guest bedroom window. He shoved the soft pink curtains aside and reached for the latch with shaking hands. 

**Unhand me, Boy!** Paimon, deeply offended, fluttered and twisted in his hold. Peter tightened his mental grip. 

What would happen when Peter died with a demon trapped in his mind? When they died together? Would that send him to hell, kept apart from his family forever? He knew he would deserve such a fate. This was his fault, and it was his responsibility to take Paimon down in any way possible. To keep him from ever destroying another family and claiming a new body. Paimon's reign would end tonight. 

**What are you _doing?!_**

"What I tried to do the first time around, asshole, only I'm gonna do it right this time." 

**Don't do this, Peter!** the voice in his head squalled, near-deafening. He sounded like a raptor; a dinosaur; a bird long extinct. The sound had the fluid between Peter's very bones shivering in a primal terror. **I have... I have never died before!**

"Suck on that, you bastard!" Peter spat, grinning like a madman. He climbed onto the open windowsill, crouching bare-footed on the cold metal frame. Just one quick fall and it was all over. Looking down at the ground far below, the tops of trees swaying in the cold night breeze, the vertigo had him closing his eyes tight as he eased his clamped fingers off the sill. It was time. 

_I'm coming now, Charlie; little chuckle-bird. I'll take care of you, baby girl..._

But he must have hesitated just a moment too long. Cowardly to the very end: that was Peter Graham. 

The door behind him burst open with an explosive bang and a shower of tiny wooden slivers. In the reflection of the window's glass, Peter watched in astonishment as a tall and naked man lunged into the room. He grabbed Peter from behind, locking strong arms around his chest and throat. 

Peter flailed violently, choking as the much larger and stronger figure physically dragged him back into the room and onto the wooden floor, pressing corded muscle against his Adam's apple in an inescapable chokehold. 

"I'll _not_ let you murder my brother so easily, little human boy," an accented voice hissed in his ear. Dark hair fell in a soft cascade onto Peter's face as the man crouched over him. 

**Lucifer,** Paimon realized in hero-worshiping relief, and Peter recognized this man as the goat from before. Paimon saw Lucifer as an older brother; as someone to protect and love him when things got rough. 

_That's the way Charlie saw me,_ Peter thought nonsensically, darkness sparking at the fringes of his vision as his oxygen-starved brain began to lose consciousness. His hands, the traitors, scrabbled and scratched at the demon's marble arms. No matter how miserable he was, his body was the product of millions of years of evolution. Human bodies just didn't want to die; not without a fight. 

If Lucifer accidentally killed him while attempting to protect Paimon, Peter would laugh himself into the grave... If only he had the breath to laugh. 

That thought scared Paimon something fierce. **He doesn't understand how fragile human bodies are! He's never lived inside one before!** He began to kick and scream inside Peter's mind, wings and talons thrashing in wild abandon. **Brother, no! Brother, have wisdom!**

Peter felt his eyes bulging; the vessels within threatening to pop from the strangling pressure. His tongue seemed to swell like a slug in his mouth. He was making an involuntary gurgling sound, hands falling limp as his strength failed him. 

_I guess I won after all,_ he thought, more relieved than smug. _Goodbye, Paimon. See you in hell._

Just as he lost consciousness, he thought he saw a glimpse of gold over Lucifer's shoulder, shining like the sun. 

* * *

"Philly! What on earth are you doing?!" 

Thomasin dropped her suitcase and flung herself onto her king's back, seizing his wrists and tugging with all her might. "You're going to kill him!" 

His broad shoulders flexed underneath her chest, as though about to throw her off. She recognized that stubborn animal look in his eyes. When Lucifer was on the hunt, he never let his prey go. 

"Philly, he's your _brother!_ " Thomasin begged, and that, at least, seemed to get through to the demon. The madness faded from his eyes and his hands relaxed, dropping the body onto the rug where it lay still and crumpled. 

"I didn't--" Black Phillip began, sounding a little astonished by his own behavior. "He was going to jump. I was only trying to--" 

Thomasin noticed the open window and nodded, touching a hand to her king's warm cheek. "You didn't mean to." 

The devil looked at her and, with a gentle knuckle, wiped a tear from her eye, bringing it to his tongue. She hadn't realized she was crying. 

"I reminded you of your mother just now," he observed, from the taste of her sadness. "Oh, my darling--" 

Thomasin hadn't consciously been thinking of Katherine, but the image always lived in her subconscious. The way her own flesh and blood had pinned her to the dirty straw, screaming obscenities in her face, hands wrapped all the way around her throat... 

She didn't have time for tears; for a centuries-old, unhealed grief. Releasing Black Phillip's wrists, she walked around him to kneel beside Peter Graham's body instead. He wasn't breathing, but he wasn't dead yet, either. 

Pulling him by the shoulders into her lap, she brought her hand to her mouth and bit down hard, skin yielding under her sharp teeth. She sucked in a deep draft of her own blood, swilling it over her tongue and humming a spell to infuse it with crackling magic. 

Then, prying Peter's jaw open, she bent and parted her lips, letting the magically-charged liquid stream from her mouth into his. She stroked his crushed throat, continuing to hum her healing song until he swallowed. A moment later, he took a deep breath, then another. His throat began to uncrumple before their eyes. 

"Thank you, Thomasin," Black Phillip said quietly, his dark eyes sweeping over her bloodied face. It was no secret that he favored her in red: said it set off the porcelain of her skin and the gold of her hair like liquid sin. He desired her like this. 

The devil was indeed a greedy thing. 

"Help me get Paimon into bed?" Thomasin suggested, tearing her eyes with great difficulty from the magnetism that was Black Phillip's heated gaze. "You may want to restrain him so he doesn't try the trick with the window again." 

The demon nodded and stood, bending to collect Peter's body, cradling him as though he weighed nothing at all. 

Thomasin stood also, pulling the blanket from the little iron bed and fluffing the many pillows. Black Phillip laid Paimon gently on the mattress, then took a spare sheet from the pile of linens on the side-table, easily tearing it into long, even strips. 

Thomasin smoothed the blanket over Peter's body, using her fingers to comb his dark, wavy hair. She was reminded of a time long ago when she'd cared for her own siblings like this, carrying them to bed and tucking them in for sweet dreams. 

Peter Graham had a prominent mole on the left side of his face, and she touched it curiously as Black Phillip used the strips of cloth to tie the boy's wrists and ankles to the headboard and footboard. The boy could use a bath and a shave, but... 

"He's handsome," she remarked, using her thumb to wipe her blood off Peter's lips. 

"Yes," Black Phillip agreed, and took her hand in his, bringing it to his own lovely mouth instead. She watched, transfixed, as he sucked the blood from her fingers, then trailed his lips down her wrist, tonguing the stinging bite she'd given herself. 

His burning eyes met hers when she gasped. "I want you," he said, plainly and clearly. 

That was the difference between Black Phillip and the men from her time; or from _this_ time, for that matter. He'd never once tried to force her, or even to convince her. He simply said his piece and waited for an answer. 

Thomasin rolled the idea over in her mind, considering. Her heart-- and other parts of her-- were singing a rapturous _yes_ , but the truth of lying with Black Phillip was this: It was an ache that could never be satisfied. Once he'd burrowed beneath her ribs and latched his fangs into her heart, she'd never been able to stop wanting him. He was nice while he lasted, but he never stayed... And saying goodbye hurt just as much the thousandth time as it did the first. 

"I'd rather not," she decided, and he nodded. Bent to touch his lips to the crown of her head instead, then let her go. 

"I understand."


	4. Chapter 4

Peter's first thought upon waking was, _damn. It didn't work._

His second was, _am I tied to the bed?_

**Yes.** Paimon, having already assessed their situation, didn't seem particularly bothered by this. And why should he be? He was warm and comfortable and very much alive. 

Great. 

Peter looked around the morning-sunlit room, taking everything in. His fabric restraints were long; long enough that he could sit up, but couldn't properly stand. He touched his neck and found it unmarred by even a single bruise or tender spot. 

_Did you do that?_ he asked, remembering how the demon had healed all his broken bones upon possessing his body. 

**Not I. I wouldn't have bothered. I am very vexed with you.**

This made Peter roll his eyes and snort derisively. 

**Don't you scoff at me, Boy. Don't you know what I can still do to you?**

At this, Peter laughed aloud, hollow and ringing. "What could you _possibly_ do to me that hasn't already been done? Take away everything I love? Too late! You already did!" 

The pause this elicited made Peter feel uneasy. There was a _slyness_ to that silence. 

The next moment, he felt something cold at his throat: sharp, stinging. His hands, of their own accord, gripped the sharp thing-- piano wire?-- and began sawing it back and forth, deep and mechanical. The agony as it split his skin, as hot blood sluiced down his chest, was excruciating, but he could not pull away or stop. 

The force of his jerky movements bit into bone. The geyser of arterial spray spurted into his wide-open eyes, and he couldn't so much as blink or wipe it away. He couldn't even open his mouth to scream. He could do nothing but perform this one function; a single-minded will to cleave his own head from his body. 

In his mind, a woman's voice shrilled in panic. _It hurts! Oh, it hurts! I failed! I failed them all! This is all my fault! Oh Peter, oh my baby, mommy's so, so, so sorry..._

With a sickening jolt, Peter realized that Paimon had plunged him into his mother's death from her own perspective: her final moments, a slew of torture and deepest despair. 

**Have you had enough, or would you like to see more?** Paimon purred, smug as could be. 

Peter could do nothing but sob, palms pressed flat to his face. _Please, please,_ please _make it stop..._

The memories faded away until Peter was no longer trapped in Annie Graham's dying mind. It felt like hours before he was able to stop weeping. 

**Now, now,** Paimon said, his voice much softer than before. **You're alright, Boy. It doesn't have to be so hard. Why do you keep fighting me so?**

Peter got the distinct impression that he was being soothed, like a naughty child who'd been punished and was now benevolently forgiven. Was it so wrong that he wanted to be comforted, even by this vile thing? 

He used his blanket to wipe the tears from his swollen and puffy face, sniffing loudly and trying to control his breathing. He told himself to hold on; to not fall apart; but couldn't think of a single reason to keep going. What was the point?! 

**You could let go,** Paimon suggested, brushing over Peter's mind with compassionate feathers. **You don't have to fight anymore... There is _nothing_ left for you in this world.**

_Is there anything for me in the next?_ Peter asked, too exhausted to even sit anymore. He curled on his side, knees to his chest, and closed his sore eyes. 

Paimon considered. **I don't know,** he confessed. **I don't know what happens to pure souls once they move beyond the veil.**

_Is mine pure?_

To this, Paimon had no answer. 

* * *

In this age of social media, stalking people was almost pathetically easy. 

Peter hadn't been online much in the past few weeks, which was understandable. He had, after all, been through one trauma after another. Facebook sort of took a backseat to a little sister's beheading-- no pun intended. 

Still, there was more than enough information for Thomasin to go off of. 

"What's all that for?" Joan asked, nodding at the shopping bags Thomasin carried, voice fakey-polite. She didn't much like Thomasin; any idiot could see that. But what cultist worth their salt would be outwardly rude to the pet of the devil himself? 

Thomasin could be fakey-polite, too. She pulled Joan's borrowed car keys out of her pocket and set them on the kitchen counter, then began sorting through her various bags. 

"Jeans and a hoodie," she explained, opening the bag from the mall so Joan could see the shoes, socks, and underwear inside. "What American boy wants to wear a kurta?" 

Joan's lips pinched white in displeasure. "It's not a _kurta,_ sweetheart. It's a traditional--" 

Thomasin cut her off by opening another bag; this one from the drugstore. "Toothbrush. Shampoo. Razor. He stinks." 

"I don't think allowing him near a razor is a good idea right now." 

Thomasin ignored this. The bag of fast food and drink carrier were pushed aside without explanation, and Thomasin made to move on to the next bag, but-- 

"Well, you're not going to give him _that!_ " 

"Oh, I'm not?" Thomasin asked, eyebrows arched. 

"Paimon requires the finest of fresh offal. I have a hutch of thoroughbred racing pigeons out back for daily butchering." 

"Wow. No wonder he isn't eating." Thomasin managed to suppress her giggle. Mostly. "You're trying to feed a teenager raw bird guts?" 

Sure; she herself had eaten stranger things, both out of starvation and to aid in her spellwork, but a kid raised on SpaghettiOs and pizza bagels would find that objectionable indeed. 

"I'm not trying to feed a teenager anything! I'm trying to meet my lord's ancient and sacred demands!" 

Frustration was turning Joan's skin blotchy as she tried not to yell at Thomasin. She really was doing her best, and probably felt upstaged by what looked like a very young and flippant upstart butting in after her lifetime of worship and careful study. 

Thomasin put a sympathetic hand on Joan's shoulder and tried not to sound condescending. "I know I don't look it," she said kindly. "But I'm a lot older than you think. I met Paimon before your great, great grandmother ever sang her first _hail, Satan_. Please, Joan; let me do my job."

She released her hold after a moment of eye contact, allowing Joan some privacy as she composed herself and processed this revelation. 

There was still one bag remaining: this one, from the local Goodwill. Thomasin carried it from the kitchen to the hallway, where there was a long mirror. Joan followed her and watched, puzzled, as the witch began to strip out of her dress. 

"What are you doing now?" 

Thomasin pulled on a pair of paint-splattered jeans and a flannel shirt, buttoning the latter up the front and stopping when just a hint of cleavage showed. She made sure to tug the sleeve of the flannel over her half-healed bite mark, pushing her thumb through the empty buttonhole. 

Joan didn't need to know about the sandwich bag of weed in Thomasin's pocket, nor the Altoid tin of rolling papers. Hopefully, Peter was as big a stoner now as he'd been before his grandmother's death. 

"There's a girl Peter likes," Thomasin explained. "I'm trying to copy her look." 

She'd stalked the Facebooks of all Peter's friends, too. Mostly, all they could seem to talk about over the past few days were the shocking, violent deaths of the entire Graham family. Everybody kept asking the same two questions: _Where is Peter?_ and, _Is he the killer?_

"Huh," Joan observed, cocking her head as Thomasin bit all her fake nails off, one after the other, and spat them into the empty bag. "Clever. You think he'll trust you more like this?" 

"It can't hurt." 

Thomasin affixed a few enamel pins to her flannel, promoting various bands and cartoons. She used a chunky black eyeliner pencil to ring her large, dark eyes, then licked her finger and artfully smudged it, giving herself the day-old appearance of a sleepy raccoon. Bubblegum-colored lipgloss completed the look. 

Glancing at Joan's reflection as she used her fingers to tease her long hair, Thomasin considered. "You look like someone who likes police procedurals," she tried. Joan's eyes flashed a hint of surprise, then warmth. Thomasin had guessed correctly. 

"I do enjoy a good caper," Joan admitted. "In my free time." 

"Me, too. So you know about 'good cop, bad cop,' right?" 

"Right..." 

"In Peter's mind, you're the bad cop. You're the one keeping him prisoner and feeding him weird things. You're on the side of the enemy." 

"I suppose you could see it that way." 

"Exactly. Now it's my turn to be the good cop." 

Joan chewed this idea over as Thomasin walked back to the kitchen to grab her shopping bags, then made her way up the narrow staircase to where Peter and Paimon were kept in the attic bedroom. She paused with deliberately mismatched socks on different stairs and glanced down at the elderly woman again. 

"Joan?" 

"Yes?" 

"Have you been watching the news? Cops are combing the mountains searching for Peter. Are there any plans to move him out of state?" 

Joan made a face. "Walter owns land in the Sonoran desert," she explained, referring to another member of her cult. "We've got a trailer built there for Paimon to live in until his new body ages and is less recognizable. We just didn't anticipate this problem to hold us up for so long." 

Thomasin nodded. "Call Walter. The plans are back on. We need to get Peter out of state as soon as possible."


	5. Chapter 5

It was absurd that warm shower water could feel _so_ good; so _normal_ at a time like this.

_You're being awfully quiet,_ Peter accused Paimon, who was lurking in the back of his mind. Peter had the oddest suspicion that the demon was trying to be unobtrusive. 

**I'm busy,** Paimon snapped, offended again. 

Through the sheer blue shower curtain, they watched the feminine shape on the bathroom sink fold over her phone. One of her legs swung idly, like a cat's twitching tail. 

_Do you know who she is?_

**She gave you her name.**

She had. Upon inviting herself into his guest bedroom, the strange girl had flicked out a pocket knife and set to hacking Peter from his bonds. "Hi Peter," she'd greeted, as he stared at her with his mouth hanging wide "Thomasin Duchanne. You can call me Tommy. Hope you like chocolate." 

Peter didn't like chocolate. Or rather, he hadn't, before. 

When she'd unceremoniously shoved a plastic straw into a cup of milkshake and pressed it into his now-free hand, he'd intended to decline. _Sorry, mystery-girl. I'm too busy starving to death. It's sort of a Graham family tradition._

Then the smell hit him: all syrupy-sweet sugar and chemicals. 

He'd chugged half the large cup down before his brain even registered what he was doing. By that point, Thomasin had successfully freed his ankles, too. 

_Must just be because I'm so damn hungry,_ Peter had thought, dizzy from the sugar rush and mild brain-freeze. _Anything would taste good right now._

Charlie was the one with the huge sweet-tooth, not Peter... 

Charlie. 

In the back of Peter's mind, Paimon let out a satisfied little cluck. 

Well, fuck. 

"You like fries?" Tommy asked, folding her knife and stowing it back in her jeans pocket. "I've got fries." 

Peter did, in fact, like fries. 

Unsure what the protocol for such a situation was, he slowly sat up and rubbed the feeling back into his chafed wrists, then scooted over when Tommy made it clear she wanted to sit down. 

"Not to be rude or anything," Peter said bluntly. "But what the hell?" 

"Eat your fries," she replied, setting a grease-stained paper bag between them and stabbing a straw into her own milkshake. 

He ate his fries. 

They were _good_ fries; hot and crunchy steak fries loaded with seasoned salt. 

Tommy popped the lid off her shake and took a fry, dunking it into her ice cream before eating it. 

Peter stole a covert glance at her. Pretty girl; roughly his age. All tall and willowy with long blonde hair and huge dark eyes, looking something like a doe. Before he could help himself, he felt his gaze linger over her bow-shaped lips. 

"You're probably a demon, huh?" he asked, as casually as he'd ask for a weather forecast. 

"Well, aren't you charming. No, I'm not a demon. Are you done eating? No offense, but you smell like a sewer malfunction." 

Peter couldn't help it: he blushed, then scowled defensively. "That's not my fault! In case you didn't notice, I've been tied to a bed." 

"Do you want to shower?" 

Oh, God; did he ever want to shower. He'd always hated feeling grubby. 

"I don't think I'm allowed to." 

"Well, I say you're allowed, and I'm the boss, so. Come on." 

She stuffed their trash into the now-empty bag, stood, and offered him a hand. 

Peter ignored it and, ever-so-cautiously, ( _this is a trap, this can only be a trap..._ ) climbed to his feet as well, then stumbled. He was still so dizzy and unsteady. 

The girl caught him easily. Though he was bigger than she, she didn't even sway from the force of his complete weight, remaining a steady, supportive pillar until he was able to properly stand. 

"Sorry," Peter mumbled, aware that he'd accidentally slapped a hand onto her boob and feeling unreasonably embarrassed about it. 

"It's fine. Take it easy. You've been through a lot." 

How much of what he'd been through did she know about? She said she was 'the boss'... That probably meant that she was the most dangerous of all. 

This time, when she slipped her hand into his, he allowed it. 

"Guitarist," she observed, and he blinked. She was looking at their conjoined hands, rubbing a thumb over the calluses on his fingertips. 

"Uh. Yeah." 

He followed numbly as she lead him out of the stuffy bedroom which, he now noticed, had been cleaned since the night before. The meat-stained parakeet painting had been taken down; the splinters from the broken door swept into a pile. The door itself still hung open on its hinges, however; shattered and useless. 

"If you're going to like. Do something horrible," he began, as they made their precarious way down the staircase. "Please just tell me? I swear I can't handle any more torture." 

"I really am just taking you for a shower." 

"That's what they said in Auschwitz." 

She didn't say anything else, not until they made it into Joan Wilson's cutesy, rubber ducky-themed bathroom. 

Releasing his hand, Tommy hopped onto the sink and pulled her phone from her pocket, gesturing to a plastic shopping bag waiting on the floor. "I assume you know what to do. I'm not looking; promise." 

Of course it was too much to expect some privacy. Of course. 

Peter glanced in the bag at the assorted toiletries, then at the girl again. She texted rapidly, thumbs flying. She would have looked perfectly at home in the hallways of his high school. 

He didn't trust her for a second. 

But, well... 

What else could he do? Smash her over the head with one of the ceramic ducks and make a run for it? 

Assuming he succeeded in knocking her out-- which he very much doubted; she was too confident and strong to be an easy target, and probably wasn't even human anyway-- then what? Take to the streets with a murderous demon half-controlling him? No money, no _shoes_? 

_You only have to get away long enough to kill yourself..._

Even as he thought this, he knew he didn't have the strength or bravery to pull it off, not now. He wasn't stubborn like his mother, or resourceful like his father. He was just Peter Graham; slacker extraordinaire; and he'd never done a single noble deed in his life. 

His gut knotted in self-loathing, Peter climbed into the tub, shut the curtain, and took off the stupid gold robe, throwing it over the curtain and onto the floor on the other side. 

The hot water rinsing his greasy, sweaty skin and hair was heaven on earth. 

He washed; pissed quietly down the drain; brushed his teeth. 

_You_ do _know who she is,_ Peter accused Paimon. _I can tell._

**What business is it of yours?**

_Tell me._

**No. Cease your pestering, Boy.**

"Hey, Tommy?" Peter called over the sound of the water. "The demon living in my head won't tell me who you are." 

Paimon cursed. It wasn't in any language Peter knew, or wanted to know. 

To his surprise, Thomasin _laughed._

"Don't you remember me, Paimon? The last we spoke, I recall you saying something about wanting to lay eggs in my chest cavity." 

**"I was made to apologize for that,"** Paimon snapped, using Peter's mouth to speak. **"How was I to know you belong to my brother's coven? You present yourself as a simple witch."**

Whoa, what? 

Peter, relieved to still have control over his body, turned the water off and stuck a hand out of the shower, feeling around until he found the towel resting atop the closed toilet lid. He wrapped it around himself, under his armpits instead of around his waist. He felt too exposed already. 

"A witch, huh?" he asked, stepping out of the shower. 

In answer, Thomasin popped the disposable razor from its case and passed it his way. "You really don't suit a moustache." 

"What does it matter? Who am I trying to impress?" 

"I know that if _I_ don't look good, I feel like shit." 

This? This was too much. 

"I just lost my entire family, and then a group of psycho geriatrics _shoved a demon inside me!_ You think I don't feel like shit already? What part of 'I want to die' don't you understand?!" 

He invaded Thomasin's personal space as he shouted, backing her into a corner and getting up in her face. Peter wasn't a yeller; that was more his mother's forte; but he felt it now, twisting in his guts like lead and making his limbs shake. Paimon, whom Peter had noticed reacting mercurialy to his stronger emotions, clucked warningly. He ignored him. "Fuck you! Fuck your razor! Fuck all this shit." 

A glob of his spit landed on Thomasin's cheek with the force of his yelling. She swiped it off and stared at him, icy and uncowed. 

"You done now?" she asked coolly, and planted a palm on his chest, shoving him back. "I do not have to put up with your attitude, Peter Graham. I'm here as a favor." 

"A favor to _who?!_ " 

"To my king." 

**Not I,** Paimon supplied, at Peter's unarticulated question. **I wouldn't allow any of my whores to be so informal with me. Lucifer has always been soft with his coven.**

Lucifer. The goat. The demon who'd near-strangled Peter to death the night before. 

Thomasin pushed Peter again. He was forced to take a step back or fall on his ass. 

The part of him that was still an idiot teenager was cringing at behaving this way towards a girl, even though he knew she was no girl at all. She looked like one, and that made the situation too confusing to handle well. 

"What's a witch, then?" he asked gruffly. Paimon had said 'whore', which gave Peter uncomfortable mental images of this girl's relationship with the goat-demon. "What do you do?" 

Thomasin looked pointedly at the razor he'd thrown, her meaning clear: _Do that, and I'll talk._

Sighing his defeat, Peter bent to pick it up, reaching for the can of shaving cream on the sink. He'd been shaving for two years now: it was on autopilot that he lathered up and got to work.

Robbed of her sink to sit on, Thomasin instead settled for the edge of the bathtub. She was closely watching Peter handle the safety razor.

**She thinks you'll try to kill us with that,** Paimon realized, amused. 

The thought made Peter's stomach turn. Dying like that would _hurt._

He felt a phantom pain from the memory of his mother's bloody death, and shivered all over. 

"I do a lot of things," Thomasin said, distracting him. "Witches have to pay rent, too." 

Did they? 

"So what, you make like, potions?" 

"This isn't Harry Potter. I do a lot of freelance. Web design. Programming. Editing. Graphic design. Other stuff." 

This all sounded too mundane. Peter waited for the shoe to drop. When she didn't continue, he prompted, "Where does the devil fit in?" 

"When I was a teenager, my family was killed in much a similar way as yours. I lost my parents; my three brothers; my sister." 

Oh, ouch. Peter's mind briefly stuck on the use of past tense-- _when_ she was a teenager?-- but it was the last word he dwelled on. 

"Older sister or younger?" 

"Mercy was ten years my junior; Jonas' twin. I was the eldest of five." 

Double ouch. So she knew a little of this hell, then. "Are you like me?" he asked, tapping his forehead. "Do you have a-- are you--" He couldn't quite force himself to say the word 'possessed.' 

Her dark eyes were sympathetic as she shook her head no. "My mind is mine alone. Black Phillip needs no body but his own." 

"Black--?" 

"That's what Mercy named the goat known as Lucifer. He posed as livestock on our farm, for a time." 

Paimon grumbled at this. Peter didn't catch his exact wording, but the demon clearly disapproved of someone so high-ranking as his brother accepting something so crude as a _nickname_ from _mortals._

"So what are you to-- to Black Phillip?" 

"After he gored my father and I stabbed my mother, he gave me the opportunity to join his coven of witches; to become his for all time. I'd tired of living in squallor; at fighting for every mouthful of food; of a price up my skirts for any man to pay. I accepted eagerly. I've never regretted that choice" 

Peter dropped his razor. It fell into the sink with a clatter. "You had a _choice_?! You _chose_ this?!" Any empathy he'd felt for her fled in a millisecond. 

Her expression hardened at his judgement. She held his eyes until he was the first to look away. 

"I did. I'd do it again. And I'm here, now, to help you make _your_ choice."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paimon doesn't much care for consent. Luckily, Thomasin doesn't take shit. (Content warning.)

Washed and fed and combed and shaved, wearing new clothes that fit him decently, Thomasin thought that Peter was looking perky enough for a proper conversation.

Still, it wasn't until well after dark that she dared take him out even as far as Joan's backyard. 

"Can we go someplace else?" Peter asked, eager as a ferret. He stood on tiptoe, trying to see over the brick wall that separated them from a main road, where the occasional sounds of traffic could be heard. 

"No. You're a missing person. Someone might recognize you." 

"Oh..." 

Thomasin could practically see the gears turning in Peter's mind with thoughts of escape, of seeking outside help-- 

"Anyone you talk to is a dead man walking. If not from Paimon himself, then from the cultists, or Black Phillip. You don't think they'd kill to keep you a secret?" 

Peter visibly deflated at this reminder. "Would you? Kill someone, I mean?" 

"In the service of my king? Yes. Without hesitation." 

Peter sagged further; sighing deeply. Dejected, he slumped out the sliding glass door and flopped on a large rock between two cherry trees. Even without his crown of flesh, he was looking rather kingly in the way he sprawled. Paimon's influence was strong as it was subtle. 

Glad that she'd brought her coat, Thomasin followed and sat on the frost-crunchy grass beside him, leaning comfortably against his legs. He stiffened, whether from personal distaste or just general shyness, she couldn't tell. But he didn't pull away. 

From her pocket, she withdrew the bag of weed and tin of rolling papers, casually getting to work. It was difficult to do, with her fingers so cold and the sky so dark, but she managed. 

Peter-- Paimon?-- let out a startled little cluck of the tongue. "Are you serious?" 

"You don't mind, do you? I'll share." 

He quieted. Considered. "You're not trying to poison me or anything, are you?" 

This made Thomasin snort. "Peter, if I wanted to kill you I'd have done it already." 

He didn't have anything to say to that, but when her first two attempts to light the joint failed, he bent and took both it and the lighter from her hands. Slipped the end into his own mouth and cupped his fingers to protect the flame, inhaling as though it were a cigarette. 

He passed it back to her a minute later, exhaling heady, skunky smoke over his shoulder so as not to do so in Thomasin's hair. "Nice," he complimented. "I'm surprised Joan is cool with this." 

"I didn't exactly ask," Thomasin admitted, giving him a sideways little grin before taking a hit herself. 

"Rebel, rebel." 

Thomasin giggled at the sarcasm, her head feeling pleasently swimmy. She tipped her head back against Peter's knee and made to take another hit, then frowned when she realized her hand was empty. 

She glanced back at Peter and saw that he'd somehow taken the joint from her again and once more held it between his lips. He kept the smoke in his lungs for an admiribly long time before exhaling straight upwards, looking like a dragon with his long throat and aqualine features. 

When he looked back down at her, he seemed mellower than he had all day. He was still exhaling smoke through his nostrils as he spoke: "What happened to the rest of them?" 

"Pardon?" 

"The goat 'gored' your dad. You stabbed your mom. What happened to the other three-- four? Four. Fuck; five kids is a _lot._ " 

"Not in my time, it wasn't. One had as many children as they could in the hopes that at least one would survive." Perhaps in that way, Katherine had been the most successful mother of all. Thomasin had survived, alright. She'd just about survived the entire world. 

Peter frowned, like he was about to ask just _when_ Thomasin's time was. Thomasin spoke before he could do so. 

"Samuel was the first to go. He was only a baby, not yet twelve months old. That was my fault." Well, of a sorts. Had she attempted to fight Pleasance the witch for her baby brother, she'd have found herself hung from the ankles and split maidenhood to navel. She hadn't known that at the time, of course, but... "A witch took him for use in a spell." 

"A witch killed your brother?" 

"Witches killed _all_ of my siblings. The twins were taken as I helplessly watched; pulled from my arms and spirited away." Had they been younger, they would have been taken sooner. Percieved innocence was such coveted magic. 

Peter regarded her for a long moment, his pupils invisible against the deep brown of his eyes. Then he handed the joint back to her. His legs had fallen open naturally, and she squirmed until she was comfortable between them, her cheek to his thigh. She inhaled shallowly and tried not to cough, recalling far fouler poultices she'd burned in the past: noxious fumes that had just about killed her, all for the sake of greater understanding and stronger magic. 

When Peter's hand touched her head, she was almost unsurprised. She allowed him to pet her hair, weaving the long strands between his fingers like he was playing a game of cat's cradle. 

"What about the last one?" he asked. 

"Last one what?" 

"Your parents. Samuel the baby. Mercy and Jonas the twins. There's still one more. How did he die?" 

He must have had a better tolerence for this stuff than she did, to be able to keep track of this discussion. 

"It's not a very nice story," she said quietly, jaw moving against his leg as she spoke. Her eyelids felt heavy, but she wasn't tired. Just idle. 

"I'm not living a very nice story right now." 

For some reason, this struck Thomasin as positively profound. Her eyes felt wet behind their tightly closed lids as she said, softly, "Madlen the witch took him. My Caleb. She took of him his virtue and planted within him the fruit of good and evil." 

"You mean she--" Peter swallowed uncomfortably. "Did she like. Rape him, or...?" 

"I found him naked and raving in the rain." Such blood he'd gushed, when they'd pulled that apple from his throat. He'd been the only one to ever truly love Thomasin, to show her kindness, and so she would never forgive Madlen for taking him from her. Not if she lived until the stars themselves burned out. 

Peter's hand stroking hair was soothing, but it was Paimon who asked, **"Was he avenged?"**

Thomasin couldn't help but smile her pleasure at the memory, though she knew it was a harsh smile; a cruel smile. She met Peter's eyes, and he swallowed again. "Yes," she said firmly. "I ate her heart."

The softness of Peter's eyes hardened to something sharp and avian, and she knew it was Paimon who looked at her now. The hand in her hair tightened; lowered to the back of her neck. His hips shifted slightly, and she noticed that he was aroused. 

"Bring Peter back, please," Thomasin requested tersely. "I'm not here to speak with you. Not yet." 

Paimon clucked his displeasure, hauling her by the hair to grind the cold zipper of their new jeans into her cheek. Showing her her place. 

"I will not do this for you," Thomasin said firmly, gripping Paimon's legs, squeezing hard enough to hurt. "Don't make me injure you, Paimon. You know I can." 

**"Will you cry to my brother if I force you?"** He sounded amused and calculating; toying with prey. Thomasin was nobody's prey, and she met his eyes so that he could drown in her utter lack of fear. **"Must he fight all your battles, Witch?"**

"I will hurt you in ways you've never known, Paimon of Pestilance, and then your brother and I both will leave you to your fate. Who knows? Maybe the boy can best you after all. I give you this one chance to stop."

She didn't drop her gaze and, a moment later, those harsher features softened out again. 

Peter covered his face with trembling hands. "I am so sorry. I didn't--" 

Thomasin leaned up to capture one of his wrists, pulling it away so that he'd have to look at her. "I know it wasn't you, Peter." 

He fought her grip and stole his hand back, again covering his face, curling in on himself. "The things he was thinking... How can I-- I don't know how to _live_ like this. I'm going to go insane!" 

She'd dropped the joint on the grass; it melted the frost around it as it smoldered to nothing. Then she took both of his hands. "That's just it," she said earnestly, craning to look up into his eyes. "Why _should_ you have to live this way? It _is_ the path to madness! Let go, Peter; just let go. Your time on this earth has ended. Humans and demons are not meant to share a vessel. It's unnatural." 

Despair clouded Peter's expression as he stared down at her. His lips shook. "I'm scared," he said hoarsely. "I'm so scared. I don't want to die." 

"It won't hurt," she promised. "You feel it already, don't you? The threads that wove your soul into your body have been severed; displaced to make room for another. You could slip away as easily as falling asleep." 

Fat tears welled in Peter's eyes. She watched one slide down his nose, felt it hit her cheek. Trusting her instincts, she leaned up further and brought her lips to his, kissing him gently. 

Peter made a muffled little sound, hauling her close, holding the back of her neck as carefully as if she were some fragile thing. He breathed hard through his nose, his free hand balling into the fabric of her coat like she was the only thing keeping him grounded. 

He pulled free some time later, his forehead touching hers, looking desperately into her eyes. 

"You could fix this," he said, hope shining radiant in every line of his face. " _You_ could fix me. You could take this thing out of me, couldn't you, Tommy? You could make me normal again!" 

Oh, _no._ Her heart sinking with dread, Thomasin was quick to shake her head. "Sweet boy. I couldn't and I wouldn't. That's not my place." 

"But you _could_!" 

"I could not. Any power I have is by the grace of my king. Were I to defy him so, I'd crumble into a pillar of salt and blow away upon the wind. I am not your hero, Peter Graham; there _is_ no saving you now. This is a battle long lost." 

Watching Peter's last hope fall was physically painful. Thomasin forced herself to do so anyway. Someone had to bear witness to the tragic crumbling of a final bastion.

"So that's it then," Peter said dully, eyes near-dead from shattered illusions. "It's all over." 

"Your story has ended. There is no need for this pain." Thomasin shifted to take his face in her hands, stroking gentle thumbs over his cheekbones and brushing his tears away. "You won't be forgotten, I promise. I'll find a way to make your memory live on." 

She would, too. His plight touched her. She felt tenderness for this boy-- this soft boy who hadn't deserved the hand fate dealt him. He'd deserved to grow up and grow old ordinary and dull, to lead a full life of its tiny joys and heartbreaks. The meddling from other words rarely ended well for mortals. Thomasin was a rare exception... 

Wasn't she? 

Peter turned his face in Thomasin's hands, his lips brushing the inside of her wrist. His hand came to rest on top of hers, holding her in place. Then-- 

"No."

Thomasin blinked. Cocked her head. "No?" 

Peter's mouth quirked in a ghastly sort of grimace. His eyes were fixed on hers again: still tear-swollen, but sharp. She saw, for the first time, both boy and demon in equal control of his staunchness. 

"I'm staying," Peter said stubbornly. 

**"The naive little thing has more of his mother in him than either of us thought,"** Paimon agreed, amused. **"I'm starting to half-believe in his dilusions."**

Lucifer help her; just by looking into Peter's determined eyes, Thomasin was starting to believe him, too.


	7. Chapter 7

Peter Graham had never once 'lived up to his full potential.'

That was what his mother told him every time his report card came in. 

That was also what the guidance counselor told him when he made his course selections every semester. 

His father the psychiatrist sighed deeply when Peter quit boy scouts; band; soccer; track. "It's because you're afraid of failure," he'd explained calmly. "Your perfectionism makes you not want to try. Maybe your mother didn't breastfeed you long enough and it damaged your self-esteem." 

Peter didn't know how to explain that his general apathy didn't have anything to do with breastfeeding or self-esteem at all, and that his father spent far too much time and money attending new-age doctoral conferences. Peter knew the truth: He just didn't fucking _feel_ like giving a damn. 

What was the point of working his ass off for shit that didn't even matter? He passed all his exams just fine without studying. What more did they want from him? He'd get into some bullshit university and later find some bullshit job and then quietly live out the rest of his bullshit life. 

Now, though; now, he would have given anything to go back to the time when _that_ was his biggest problem. He'd never much thought he _wanted_ his bullshit life until it was all being taken away from him. 

Walter, upon arriving to pick him up at sunrise, had apologized profusely while setting Peter up in his camper trailer, drawing thick curtains over every window. "My lord, I hope these are suitable accommodations for you. That body is too recognizable to ride in the car. We want no police attention." 

Peter, who had last seen this man kneeling, naked, beside his mother's headless body, had nothing to say to him. For once, it was a relief to let Paimon do all the talking (and clucking).

Thomasin had been invited to ride in the car with them. With Walter at the wheel and Joan at his side, the trio would look like an elderly couple taking their grandaughter on a vacation. 

She'd shot their offer down, and now lay instead on the floor of the darkened camper vehicle with Peter, her head pillowed on one arm; her free hand curled around the horn of the large black goat Peter could still hardly believe was the devil himself. 

**He prefers it that way,** Paimon explained authoritatively. **He likes to go unnoticed. His human shape is much too conspicuous.**

Peter hadn't seen the finer details of Lucifer's human shape, but he'd appeared a large, full-bearded, olive-skinned man with long, dark hair. He might have turned a few heads in Peter's very white suburban neighborhood, but was a goat really that much better? 

Thomasin stirred in her sleep, rolling onto her side with a moan, golden hair escaping from her ponytail to spill over her face. Peter felt an urge to go to her and stroke it behind her ear. 

**You desire her. Perhaps brother-mine will lend her to you for some light entertainment, as a token of good faith.**

The goat's ears swivelled in their direction. He focused one square-pupilled eye on them. Peter had the most unsettling feeling that their silent conversation was being listened in on. He didn't need any more demons in his head. 

_In this century, women aren't really for 'lending,'_ Peter tried to explain, suspecting it was a lost cause. Paimon's abhorrent thoughts and behavior the night before had firmly cemented him as a rapist and a raging misogynist. 

**That one is. She does as my brother commands. _She_ is not from your century, either.**

Peter had already begun to figure that much out, both from Thomasin's cryptic clues and the odd way she spoke after she was stoned; her wording so precise and proper. Then there was the old-fashioned nature of her and her siblings' names... 

**Clever boy.** Paimon sounded mocking, but there was a slight affection to his tone, too. 

Black Phillip settled his head on Thomasin's chest, closing his eyes again. It was a relief not to be held captive by his golden stare. 

Demon or not, he still _smelled_ strongly of livestock. 

_Does she love him?_ Peter found himself wondering. The goat-devil had murdered her _father._ And while he may not have killed her siblings himself, he'd certainly not lifted a hoof to save them, either. He'd let Thomasin become completely isolated, and then he'd swooped in to take the prize. How could anyone love a monster who'd done that to them? 

**It takes a certain kind of human to bargain with demons. She was corrupt from the start. Most would prefer death-- present company included, of _course_. **

Not all of Paimon's interactions were directly translatable; perhaps Peter was getting better at interpreting the things left unsaid. Just now, Peter got the impression that he was being mocked for both of his failed suicide attempts. Paimon was questioning Peter's commitment to protecting humanity at the cost of his life. 

Peter grit his teeth and ignored this. The guilt for his own cowardice was overwhelming enough as it was. _What are you implying, about Thomasin?_

**Only that youth at her age comes at a dear price, and she always pays her bill.**

What _was_ Thomasin doing, to stay so young? If Paimon's amused tones were any indication, it was something terrible indeed. 

Peter didn't really want to know. She was the closest thing he had to an ally in this situation. He couldn't bear to have his fragile faith in her shattered, too. What else did he have to hold on to? 

Rather than beg Paimon to keep silent on the matter, Peter inched forward on his knees. Black Phillip opened his eyes again, watching as Peter crawled in behind the sleeping girl. He pressed himself against her back, arranging their bodies like they'd slept the night before, stoned and tucked into Joan's guest bed. 

**Humans are so soft,** Paimon observed. **You like your warm nests and your fabrics and your full bellies; your intoxicants and your comforts and having someone sweet to hold.**

Peter looked pointedly at the goat cuddled into Thomasin's chest. _It looks like you demons like that stuff, too._

**Lucifer has always been strange. But he's the oldest and the most powerful, so he does as he pleases.**

Peter thought a lot about those things. Of Lucifer being the most powerful. If such a thing as demons existed, then what about angels? Gods? Surely there was light to balance the dark. His family had never been religious, but it was hard to refute the evidence of his own eyes. Would praying to God help him? 

**You can try,** Paimon suggested slyly. **Don't you know, Boy? God fell out of love with your kind after you murdered His son. He always was a fickle bastard, dear old Ellie. Moody as the sea and twice as petty. Everyone blames Eve for partaking of the forbidden fruit, or the serpent for whispering words of temptation into her ear... But nobody ever asks who _planted_ that tree to begin with.**

Through cultural osmosis, Peter was able to understand maybe a third of that boast. 

_So God exists, but He doesn't care about us?_

**Why don't you find out?**

There was too much smug Knowing in his voice for Peter to trust. He put a pin in that thought and changed the subject. Even talking to a demon was preferable to laying in a silent, dark trailer, fearing the unknown he was being shanghaied towards. If he thought too much about his situation, he would panic. And what good would panicking do, in this place where he held no power? 

_You're a kidnapper's wet dream, Peter Graham. Just stay quiet and do what the nice criminals say, right?_

_Tell me something good about Charlie,_ Peter requested quickly, pressing his forehead to the back of Thomasin's overwarm neck and his palm to her belly. Feeling her slow breathing against his chest and the endless rolling of the trailer's tires beneath was oddly comforting. 

**You ask me for stories? I am no nursemaid to rock your cradle and sweeten your dreams, Boy.**

_Please._

**You bargain? In exchange for what?**

What did Peter have to give? After some hesitation he offered: _I'll eat some of that bird meat from Joan._

The caught the demon's attention, though he didn't want Peter to see just how interested he felt. **Daily. You will eat it daily.**

_Weekly, not daily. Assuming it doesn't make me puke._

**It will not.**

The agreement was made. Deals with a devil; had he really sunk so far?

Paimon waited until Peter got as comfortable as he could manage, lying on the thinly carpeted floor with Thomasin's slightly sweaty head tucked beneath his chin, before the images behind Peter's closed eyelids began to warp.

_What are you doing?_

**Telling you your story.**

A story? All Peter could sense were muted colors... And the faint taste of chocolate in his mouth. 

He was abruptly surrounded by noisy children wearing backpacks and carrying lunchboxes, walking in clusters of three and four. Below his sneaker-clad feet was a dirty, industrial hallway floor... 

Wait. He recognized these sneakers. Slightly dirty; thin blue denim. Summer shoes. _Charlie's_ summer shoes. 

They walked alone; a lonely island in a sea of noisy, chattering students. Charlie was always alone, wasn't she? 

Her left hand squeezed the plastic body of one of her nightmarish dolls, and her free hand clutched a handful of Hershey's kisses; one of the few chocolates that was always safe for her to eat, because the factory that made them never used peanuts. 

The world was so big from Charlie's perspective. The buzzing flourescent lights above seemed miles away. She'd always been tiny-- even if she'd gotten the chance to grow up, she'd probably never have cracked five-two.

She clucked to herself as she walked, enjoying the warm sunshine on her face as she thought idly about how she'd like to be in her treehouse once she got home. It was nice up there. She liked being up high, watching the world from above. She was free to color up there, or to read, or to build her dolls, with nobody scolding her or trying to force her to be more social. 

"Hey! It's the freakazoid!" 

The voice behind Charlie made her heart kick; her palms sweat. Not David, not today... The older boy had been paying a lot of attention to her lately, when Charlie wanted nothing more than to disappear from everyone's view. She looked anywhere but at David as he circled her, leaning over her, grinning down. Finally, there was nowhere to look but down at her own shoes. 

"What'cha got there?" he asked, reaching to tug the toy from her grasp. She retreated; feeling the concrete wall brush her back. His hands were so big, his smile huge and white like piano keys. "What, don't wanna share? What's the matter, Frankie? You don't want to play with me?" 

Frankie. _Frankenstein._ She'd nervously explained her muscular condition whenever he hassled her in the past; telling him that the reason her face sagged wasn't her fault; wasn't something she could control, but he brought it up every time he saw her. 

Talking wasn't easy at the best of the times, but it was always harder when she felt nervous, her heart fluttering like a trapped bird in her narrow chest. The words dried up and died somewhere between her brain and mouth, and she rarely managed any sound at all. Today she uttered a dry, raspy little cluck.

In a second, David's mocking smile became a snarl of rage. He planted one of his big hands on Charlie's throat and slammed her head into the wall. Peter felt the sharp starburst of pain in his sister's brain from the impact, and gasped aloud. 

_Charlie_ didn't gasp, though. Charlie remained silent as a prey animal, her heart hammering a frightened tattoo against the webbing between David's thumb and forefinger. He squeezed her threateningly, and dark spots sparkled in the edges of her vision. 

"I hate that _fucking_ noise you make," he growled, pushing his nose against hers, breathing hard in her face. She smelled cafeteria lunch on his breath; saw flecks of yellow and green in his narrowed blue eyes. His body felt hot as a furnace; like he'd burn her up just by standing too close. "It's _cluck, cluck, cluck,_ all day long. What, you some kind of retard or something?!" 

Charlie said nothing. She couldn't, and not just because he was crushing the breath from her lungs. Her head felt tight and hot from how hard he was squeezing her. It reminded her of the first time she'd had an allergic reaction, her throat closing up like it was full of teddy-bear stuffing. Mommy had had to pick her up and sprint to the car... 

"Answer me, dipshit!" David shook her, rattling her head, though not as hard as he had the first time. _"Say something,_ you freaky little--"

Several sets of footsteps echoed up the otherwise empty school hallway. A look of panic crossed David's face as what he was doing-- attacking a younger, deformed little girl-- occurred to him. 

Released, Charlie slumped, clutching her throat and breathing raggedly. She folded over herself, clutching her stomach protectively. 

David turned and walked away, hands in his back pockets just as Peter and a group of his stoner buddies rounded the corner, wafting the smell of pot so thickly it was nearly a visible cloud around them. 

Peter looked at his sister, at the strange way she was standing against the wall. "Charlie? I was looking all over for you. Why didn't you come outside and wait for me like you were supposed to?"

Charlie didn't answer. Her voice was still lost somewhere deep inside her. 

Though Peter was high enough that all worries seemed far away, he could still tell that something wasn't quite right. He left his group of buddies and approached Charlie, bending to smooth out her rumpled hoodie. 

She'd dropped her toy, so he picked it up and gave it back to her. Then he brushed her cheek with his knuckle; soft as a butterfly. 

"Were people being dicks to you again?" he asked. 

David was only a speck in the distance now. It wouldn't do any good to say anything, so Charlie just turned her head into Peter's shoulder. Even though he smelled funny, and even though she sometimes embarrassed him in front of his friends, she'd never once doubted that he loved her. He was always nice to her. 

"Want me to carry you?" Peter finally asked, when it became clear that Charlie wasn't going to speak. She nodded, so he turned around and offered his back for Charlie to climb on, which she did, hooking her arms around his neck. He bounced her, catching his lanky arms under her knees. 

"Yo, can you give me a ride home?" One of Peter's friends asked, a giggle in his voice. "I'm too high to see the road, dude." 

"Yeah, sure. Ready to go, Charlie?"

She nodded again, her eyes closed, lulled by the sway of Peter's walking. Her throat and head ached fiercely, but with Peter, she felt safe. Loved. She held him tight all the way to the car. 

**She loved you,** Paimon told Peter, startling him back into the present, in his own mind. 

Right. The trailer. The goat. Thomasin. Peter blinked and shook his head, clearing away the afterimages lingering from seeing the world through his sister's eyes. His eyes were wet again. 

_I asked for a_ good _Charlie memory,_ he grouched, though he knew better than to expect honesty from a demon. _How is watching her get bullied a good thing?_

Paimon clucked, offended. **That _was_ a good memory. I thought you'd be pleased to see yourself from her eyes. Ungrateful...**

Peter supposed that, from a certain point of view, Paimon wasn't wrong. It was good to know that Charlie loved him... But guilt that he'd never noticed how bad the bullying had gotten seeped into his heart anyway. If he'd been sober, he might at least have seen the red marks that David asshole left on her neck... 

_I thought people just said douchey shit to her sometimes,_ he confessed, as though he hoped Paimon might alleviate his guilt. _I didn't know they were hurting her._

**Well. You were wrong, weren't you?**

Peter supposed that served him right for turning to a demon for comfort. He sighed, glad he at least had Thomasin to hold in this stifling hot trailer. 

_Do you know where we're going?_ he asked. 

**I do not.** Paimon seemed less than thrilled about that fact. **But I trust my followers to have useful intentions.**

_But you don't know for sure..._

"We are going to a campground in the Arizona desert," a deep voice broke the silence, causing Peter to jolt and Thomasin to open her sleepy eyes. Lucifer yawned. 

"Y-yeah?" 

"Yes. It was my idea." The goat again fixed his firey eyes on Peter's face. "You'll be imprisoned there as long as it takes for you to leave that body, Peter Graham. I hope you enjoy sand."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure my ancestors are very proud of me using my four-year religious seminary diploma to write blasphemous demon fanfiction.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for animal death.

"They used to call housewives 'Goody,'" Thomasin informed Peter, her bare feet soaking in a bucket of cool water to alleviate the relentless heat of the sun that beat down on the tin can they now called home.  
  
They. The three of them: Peter/Paimon, Thomasin, and the devil. A strange sort of family; there was no doubt about that.

Peter paused his work feeding the hutches full of breeder pigeons and looked over his shoulder at her.

It was early evening in the desert. The worst of the day's heat had passed, but the world was still steaming from having been baked all afternoon. Peter was shirtless, and sweat stood out like dew on his back. His hair was starting to get long, and he constantly shook it out of his eyes like a horse trying to shake off a fly.

"What does it mean?" he asked, resting the basket of feed on his hip as he once more shoved his hair back.

"It's short for 'good wife.'" Thomasin rocked in her chair and sloshed her feet in the bucket of water, looking out to the desert where they now lived. There was no civilization for miles upon miles. If she walked west for a few hours, she'd stumble across the Tohono Oʼodham reservation. Any further and she'd be nearing the fringes of Mexico.

The world was a lot smaller than it had been when Thomasin was born. It was impossible to be _truly_ isolated anywhere. People were everywhere, no matter how cold or hot or perilous.

But Peter didn't know that. As far as he was aware, they'd been left at the end of the world to rot.

"Instead of 'Mrs.' Your mother would have been called 'Goody Graham.' Being a good wife was the highest role a woman could hope to strive for."

Peter snorted derisively. "What kinda Crucible shit..."

Thomasin felt pleased. At least the tale of The Crucible was set around the same location and time period of her actual childhood. Peter had compared her to Shakespeare, the Bible, and even Moby Dick ("We weren't _Quakers,_ Peter. We were _Puritans.")_ without caring to hear why that was inaccurate.

Spotting something on the horizon, Peter squinted, then pointed. "That your boyfriend?"

Thomasin looked in the direction Peter was pointing, but saw nothing for nearly a minute. The black speck approaching them was too blurry to make out, so she could only assume it was Black Philip.

Damn. Her eyes were going. Already her hearing was duller than it should be, and when she'd doused herself in the outdoors shower that morning, a bit too much of her hair had come out. Some of the hair was silvery instead of blonde.

There was no denying it: Thomasin was aging again. If she wanted to reverse the process, she needed young blood, and fast. It had been far too long since she'd last danced under the moon wearing the stolen life of an innocent like a gown.

The pigeons in Peter/Paimon's hutch cooed and stirred as the boy reached in and selected one, gently pulling it out with its wings (the flight feathers had been clipped to prevent escape) pinned to its sides.

Docile and tame and used to human contact, the fat bird with its white breast and its gray-dappled feathers sat calmly in Peter's hands, tilting its head when he stroked its throat with a finger.

Peter carried his bird to the plastic chair right next to Thomasin's and sat, stretching his long legs in their cutoff jeans in front of him. His bare toes were dirty.

Thomasin turned and rested her chin on her hand, watching. She saw the exact moment Peter left the party and Paimon took the wheel. It was subtle-- a tightening of the jaw, a cruel gleam to the eye. She'd seen it happen so many times now that she'd never mistake one for the other, even when they tried to trick her, even though they wore the same face.

Paimon nuzzled Peter's nose into the bird's breast, and the bird blinked pinprick black eyes, cooing and content. Then Paimon opened Peter's mouth wide and bit its head off with a series of noisy pops.

Holding its feet like a handle, Paimon twisted the bird, wiggling it back and forth as its wings beat the air until the last few sinews gave way. A stray spray of hot blood hit Thomasin's cheek.

Paimon split the headless pigeon in half and buried Peter's face in its steaming insides, gobbling noisily until nothing remained but wet feathers and the knobby ends of bones.

He turned his burning gaze to Thomasin and grabbed the roots of her hair with a gory fist, dragging her close and rasping the blood off her cheek with Peter's tongue. She allowed it, but as soon as the demon pushed Peter's lips to hers and dipped his filthy tongue inside, she shoved him back.

By that point, the large black goat had reached them. He stared at his brother with fiery orange eyes and, growling in a way no human ever could, Paimon settled back in his seat, releasing his unwanted hold on the other's hair.

No words needed to be said. The silent threat that hung in the air was enough. In a moment, Peter reclaimed control over his own body.

"Fff," he hissed, and leaned over the arm of his chair to spit red into the dirt. "Fuck. He can't even rinse my mouth out?" He looked down in disgust at the mess that covered his hands and chest.

Then he glanced at Thomasin, saw the blood and viscera streaked across her jaw and mouth, and sighed. A few loose blonde hairs were stuck to the tacky, drying gunk caking his fingers. "He did it again, didn't he."

Thomasin shrugged. A demon was a demon. Tell them no, and they'd forever try to take what had been denied them. They were a lot like toddlers that way.

"I need a wash," the teenager proclaimed, and stood, bones clattering from his lap to hit the ground. He shook in disgust and, stepping gingerly around the goat, walked around the trailer that he now called home, towards the outdoors camping shower they had set up out back. 

As soon as Peter was gone, Philip stepped close and, between blinks, transformed from a goat to a man. He knelt, bare, in the dirt and the scrub and rested his head on Thomasin's knee.  
  
Almost by force of habbit, Thomasin stroked his long, dark hair. It was as coarse as his fur had been, and not terribly in fashion. If he'd been wearing a suit and tie, he'd have been considered roguishly handsome. Like this, he simply looked wild, especially with his orange, square-pupiled eyes.  
  
Thomasin felt the dense keratin of his small horns hidden in his nest of hair and stroked around them, lightly petting him.

"I missed you," she said, for he had been away a while.

"And I you." His jaw bumped her leg as he mumbled. "I find comfort at your hearth."

Thomasin had no hearth, not here, in her little trailer in the boiling-hot desert, but she knew what he meant. "That gladdens me, Lord."  
  
His large, square hands rubbed up and down her calves, not sensually, only seeking contact. Thomasin stroked soothing circles onto his bowed back, feeling scar and corded muscle alike. It was much like cuddling her cats back at home.

"I don't like that he touches you while I'm away," Philip mumbled.

"Paimon, or Peter?" Thomasin asked, smiling. She and Peter had fallen into bed together-- often literally, just to sleep, and sometimes in the more carnal sense of the word-- many times over since being quarantined in the desert. Peter was desperate for contact, to hold to some shred of humanity, and Thomasin had always enjoyed release.

An orange eye rolled up to look at her. "Both, perhaps. Be mine instead. Refuse them your touch. I would slay my own brother for my woman."  
  
Amazing. He'd ignored her for decades while she'd taken on countless lovers; male and female, both and neither; yet now he stepped in with childish complaints?

"You speak as though you don't have hundreds of witches at your disposal, falling over themselves to do your bidding," Thomasin pointed out, a laugh audible in her voice.

"But not _you."_  
  
Ah, of course. That was always, _would_ always be the truth: Tell a demon no on any little thing, and they'd try to find a way to get it. Philip, for all his age and class, was little better than his brother.

It was a tempting thought, being Black Philip's woman. Hadn't that been something she'd always craved in her heart? Being special to him? Being treasured?  
  
"Would I be your queen?" she asked, smiling idly at the ridiculous thought. "Me, with my humble beginnings, ruling at your side?"  
  
Philip took the hem of her short blue sundress and dipped it into the bucket of water, then raised it up her thighs to her face, dabbing lightly at the blood that streaked her mouth and chin and cheek. To her surprise, he was not laughing.

"Would you want that? Wouldst thou live deliciously, for ever?"

A noise-- part laugh, part gasp of incredulous air-- left Thomasin's mouth. "My Lord, you cannot mean that!"

He met her eyes, his gaze ever burning. "And why not? You have been a loyal servant all these centuries. You have never forsaken me. You have done my work and left sacrifices at my alter. You've never tired of life; your hunger for it lasts eternal. I am the devil, woven on the same loom as this earth's God. Why would you doubt me now?"

Thomasin's tongue felt heavy in her mouth, and in her chest, her heart pounded. What was there to say to that?  
  
Shouldn't this offer be the deepest desire of her heart? Shouldn't _any_ self respecting witch yearn to be the devil's Goody?

"How long do I have to consider this generous offer, my Lord?" she asked finally, her voice barely a whisper.  
  
Philip pressed his mouth to the top of her thigh, kissing a freckle in a way that made butterflies swarm her system. "As long as you need, little one. So long as your words are true."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whaddup, I just finished reading Laird Hunt's "In the House in the Dark of the Woods" and it brought back all my favorite creepy Puritan witch feelings.


End file.
